This invention relates generally to a device having a viewable indicator and relates, more particularly, to the viewable or exposed components of such an indicator.
Devices such as clocks, watches or other time keeping devices commonly include a visual indicator comprised of a circular disc or dial and hands or other moving markers which must be viewed in order to obtain the information measured or monitored by the device.
Typically these devices complete a full cycle of their display within 12 hours, and thus indicate two points in time each day in the same manner--which is ambiguous.
Devices are also known which have a 24 hour cycle but do not use the standard positions of the 12 hour clock face to represent both daily occurrences of the same numerical time. That is, in these devices 7:00 AM (anti-meridian) and 7:00 PM (post-meridian) would not both be indicated at the typical 7:00 position. Thus use of these devices requires some education on the part of the user.
It is further noted that existing devices typically allow design or decoration over an area limited to the circular face of the device and that devices which allow greater display area are usually less compact or rely on maintaining some transparency of the decorated surfaces thus limiting the quality of the graphics.
Other devices which attempt to overcome these difficulties are known but these rely on overly complicated mechanisms thus reducing their reliability and manufacturability.
An object of the present invention is to provide a unique and interesting visual indicating mechanism. It is also an object of the present invention to provide an indicating mechanism which renders a unique visual display for each time of the day, thus distinguishing each AM time from its PM counterpart while allowing both AM and PM times to be indicated at their usual positions on the clock face.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a greater surface area for display or decoration and to do so without depending on the co-action of semi-transparent layers for the achievement of the display function.
Another object of the present invention is to provide the aforementioned improvements in a compact and uncomplicated mechanism.